Font Bureau Sues NBC: Network Not Its Type

As if NBC didn't have enough problems, what with poor prime time ratings, occasional flare-ups of Celebrity Apprentice, and its best franchise down to its last option--"Law & Order: Traffic Division"--along comes The Font Bureau with a $2 million trademark and copyright infringement suit over the network's alleged misuse of registered typefaces to promote The Jay Leno Show, Saturday Night Live, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

The Font Bureau, a national typographic design firm whose typefaces have been featured among clients such as Apple, Microsoft, and The New York Times, alleges that NBC paid only for a license to install on a single computer certain of its registered typefaces, but purportedly wrongly copied the limited fonts on numerous other computers and employed typefaces for which it allegedly had not obtained licenses from the design firm. Some of the protected typefaces allegedly purloined by NBC include Interstate, Antenna, and the wonderfully named Bureau Grotesque, whose use should be confined to government publications.

The case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York is The Font Bureau v. NBC Universal, Inc. & CNBC, Inc. (Case No. 09-04286). NBC could be forced to scrap its marketing materials for its programming if it is found to have infringed on the trademarks & copyrights registered by The Font Bureau, which may prompt a swift out-of-court resolution of the dispute.

"TUOL" agrees that NBC has a problem with the writing on The Jay Leno Show and Saturday Night Live, but wouldn't necessarily have attributed it to the fonts.